daily slice-of-life photo blog of a Gen-X dad
Tonight I watched the Detective Galileo movie “Silent Parade“. It starred the usual main cast, but this one really focused on Detective Kusanagi and the guilt he felt due to a failed investigation. I love this series of movies adaptations of the Keigo Hoshino novels. The mysteries are very clever, and you’re left guessing until the very end. Highly recommended! (the books too!)
This year I got a set of Sony WH-CH520 headphones for Father’s Day. I wanted some wireless headphones that I can use with my phone and iPad, and even my Macbook Air and these Sonys fit the bill. The features I love:
I’ve only been using them for a short while, but I love them. They are very comfortable, and don’t make my ears hot. They also sound great! I have the bass enhancer activated (and bass boosted in the EQ). Very nice!
If you would like some nice, inexpensive on-ear headphones, the Sony WH-CH520 model is worth checking out!
I finally watched all 52 episodes of the 2017 Chinese television series “The Legend of the Condor Heroes”. I enjoyed it quite a bit!
After reading the books (which I loved), I was curious to see how this latest re-telling of the Condor Heroes story would be. I was pleasantly surprised that the first episodes’ characters, plot, and overall feeling matched with what I had imagined in my mind when I read the books.
The kung fu moves were excellent and they spent a lot of effort in the flying effects, the spinning moves, and the choreography in general. It was interesting to me that in the books and also the live-action series, most of the kung fu is not meant to deal lethal blows. Even when fighting with weapons, the conflict was to show superiority, and trying to kill someone is a serious line that only the villains were willing to cross.
Speaking of the kung-fu, many of the moves has specific names, and in the tv show, they flashed subtitles when the person used the move. Pretty cool!
One criticism of the TV series I have is that the special effects were sometimes horrible. Laughably so! In fact, they were so bad, didn’t mind it so much after a while. They did their best! And the fighting was awesome, after all.
This adaptation stuck close to the book’s plot, but at the end I think they skipped over a lot. For instance, when Viper Ouyang was harassing our heroes in Mongolia, he suffered some hilarious indignities, however the TV show only showed one of them, and even that was toned down.
Overall, though, I thought the 2017 series was excellent. I’d definitely recommend it to fans of the legendary wuxia series.
My friend and I went to see Pompo: The Cinéphile at the theater as part of our anime-watching habit. Whenever GKIDS has a special screening, he buys the tickets, and I buy the beer (the theater has beer on tap!). It’s something I really look forward to!
Anyways, I thought the movie was excellent. The plot is basically the making of a movie, but there are so many little inspirational nuggets thrown in that I was kind of blown away and even got a little emotional. What a movie! And maybe it was the beer too. But regardless, Pompo: The Cinéphile left me with a positive attitude and life seemed just a bit brighter.
A very nice little gem of a film. Go see it!
While browsing Amazon Prime Movies, Garden State popped up in the recommendations. I have kind of known about this 2004 movie for a long time and have been mildly interested but not enough to actually watch it but since i had a couple of hours, today was the day!
Although I enjoyed Garden State, I think it is more suited to a younger version of myself. I think I would have been really into if I saw it when it first came out, but now it felt a little naive and lacking. Still, I am happy I watched it.
One thing I am happy about is that while reading the movie’s Wikipedia page, I learned about the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. I think that bit of info was worth watching the movie for. 😀
